We
purchased this Samsung Captivate i897 smartphone a few weeks ago at
an AT&T store for about $200. That price was after the discount for
renewing the contract an additional two years.

The Samsung Captivate usually retails
for anywhere from about $500 at online stores such as Amazon to over
$600 at brick & mortar outlets such as Best Buy.

We chose the Samsung Captivate after
researching various phones online and playing with dozens of them in
the AT&T store. It seemed like the best Android powered option from
AT&T at the time (February 2011).

Included in the box with the i897
smartphone was a set of headphones, extra headphone ear pieces, a Micro
to A type USB cable, a USB plug wall charger, a paper user's manual,
a quick start guide, and a warranty card.

My initial
impression of the Samsung Captivate upon first using it was that the 4"
Super Amoled screen was amazingly sharp and clear with vibrant colors. The
form factor of the phone feels slim but the large screen size may cause it
to not fit so well into some jeans. Since the Captivate has very smooth
surfaces and rounded edges, I'd highly recommend buying a rubberized skin
case or at least an invisible shield to protect the phone when you
invariably drop it.

The first case we
bought for the phone was a silicone skin from a Hong Kong seller on eBay for
just a few dollars. It didn't fit as snugly as we had hoped and my wife
complained that it frequently grabbed strands of her hair. It also interfered with use
of the four main buttons located at the bottom of the phone's screen.

A much better case for the Samsung Captivate
is the "Amzer Luxe Argyle" avaiable on Amazon for $9.95. She chose the "hot
pink" color which actually looks more like light purple in most lighting. It
fits perfectly and the lip around the screen doesn't interfere as much with
the buttons.

To test the video
playback capabilities of the Samsung Captivate, I loaded it up with some
videos in a variety of file formats. It had no problem playing any of the
most common video file types such as MPG, MPEG, AVI, and WMV. Officially,
the i897 can play all MPEG4, H.263, and H.264 encoded video files.

The music player app on the Captivate can play
MP3, AAC, WMA, and MIDI. I also tried playing some FLAC (free lossless audio
codec) music files and found that they worked without a hitch.

One of the main
reasons I encouraged my wife to purchase an Android smartphone rather than
an iPhone was the simple ability to insert a Micro SD memory card and easily
replace the phone's battery.

For now, I inserted an 8 GB Transcend MicroSD
memory card into the phone but I like knowing that I can upgrade that to 16
or 32 GB at any time. I've also always enjoyed having the option of
purchasing a second battery on eBay for our small electronic devices. It's
nice having a
back up battery on long airplane flights that can be quickly swapped in when needed
to keep the mobile entertainment playing.

After loading up
the Captivate with music and video files, the media scanner will
automatically run and make those files available in the Video Player or
Music Player applications. I did notice that the music/video apps don't seem
to respect folders and just lump all your files into one big list. You can
sort by album, artist, or title which makes creating a playlist or finding a
specific file easier. There must be a third party media manager or media
player application that will respect folders (aka directories) if this issue
really bothers you.

According to
website articles written around the time of this review (February 2011),
there are about 350,000 iPhone Apps while Android has about 100,000
applications available. It seems like all of the most important applications
that most of our friends and family use are available on both platforms, so
it's really a non-issue. I haven't once gone looking for an app in the
Android Market for a certain purpose and not been able to find a suitable
application to meet the specific need.

My favorite feature
of these new phones such as the Captivate is the excellent voice recognition
that helps you avoid typing in a search phrase into Google.com or an
address into the Google MyDirections navigation program. We mistakenly
discovered the "Safe Search" feature that won't allow any bad words to
appear while playing around with the voice recognition. You can easily turn
it off by hitting the "Settings" button (small rectangle with horizontal
lines), and choosing "Off" on the Safe Search options menu.

Other things that
we like about the Samsung Captivate include the very quick operation, the
easy to browse menus, the loud external speaker for media playing or
speakerphone calls, the excellent battery life (compared to my friend
with an Evo 4G), the excellent sound quality out of the included headphones,
and the flawless playback of music or video files including HD videos on
YouTube (when connected to a strong WiFi signal).

Some of the issues
or minor annoyances we've discovered about the Captivate are that it
sometimes gets poor reception on very cloudy days or inside buildings,
occasionally a caller put on speakerphone can hear themselves echoed back
when the phone is placed on a wood or glass table, the A-GPS navigation
system sometimes loses satellite signal at inopportune times, and the A-GPS
also has some problems acquiring a location fix when started under heavy
tree cover or clouds.

We also
discovered that the phone seems to freeze about once or twice a month and
requires a restart to run smoothly again. I'm used to that kind of problem
after years of using Windows XP computers and now even Windows 7. Seems like
every computer device runs better after a restart every so often.

These issues are rarely more than just a
minor and infrequently occurring annoyance, so don't let them sway you from
buying what is overall an excellent smartphone.

To help keep your
Samsung Captivate or any Android powered smartphone running quickly and to
extend the battery life, I'd recommend installing a task manager
application. These programs allow you to easily kill any processes that may
be running in the background that are no longer needed, and prevent them
from using up system resources or draining the battery. Some of the most
popular options include Automatic Task Killer, SystemPanel, Android Memory
Management, Advanced Task Killer, and Advanced Task Manager.

The easiest way to
get music, videos, pictures, or documents onto your Samsung Captivate is to
connect it via the included Micro to A type USB cable to your computer. The
phone will recognize that it has been connected to a computer and show the
phrase "USB Connected" in the main drop down menu. You can access this
screen by swiping down the bar at the top of the screen.

Then tap on "USB Connected" and choose
"Mount" to switch the phone's memory into mass storage mode. This will allow
the computer to see the phone's internal 16 gigabytes of memory and the
Micro SD card as hard drives in your file explorer. I chose to create
"Music" and "Videos" folders to help organize the content on the phone. But
you could just drag and drop or cut and paste your media anywhere in the
storage and the media scanner will find it.

As you can tell
from the title of my site, "Paul's
Travel Pictures", I'm somewhat of a digital photography enthusiast. So
one of my main interests in reviewing this new phone was testing out the 5
megapixel camera's capabilities. It captures still images and videos (29
FPS) at 1280x740 resolution which is "720P" high definition.

Unfortunately, the
Samsung Captivate does not have a dedicated camera button to launch the
camera application. Although it does just take one quick tap on the main
menu to fire up the camera. Some of the features of the Captivate's camera
application include auto focus (with tap to focus on certain area option),
smile detection, digital zoom, multi shot, digital photo effects, panorama
mode, ISO (sensitivity) control, and a self timer.

Although I enjoyed
using the camera application on the Captivate, I would much rather use one
of my small
Canon Digital Cameras instead. Mainly because the Captivate lacks a
flash or even a photo LED light, the colors don't seem as vibrant, and the
macro ability while adequate is lacking compared to a real digital camera.

Other than those relatively minor issues, the
5MP sensor on the Captivate does capture sharp images with excellent detail
in well lit conditions.

To see the full
sized sample images directly from the Samsung Captivate with no post
processing or resizing, click on the thumbnails on this page and then click
on the large blue link below each smaller 800x600 web sized photos.

To view a sample
3GP 720P HD video clip from the Captivate, click on the large blue link
below. You may need a media player other than Windows Media Player (WMP)
such as the excellent VLC Media Player to play the file.

I captured a few
short video clips of the Samsung Captivate playing HD videos on YouTube to
give you an idea of what the screen looks like and how well the external
speaker sounds. It also includes a few seconds of one of the "live
wallpapers" in motion. To view the video, click on the large blue link
below. To download to your hard drive, right click on the link and choose
"Save Target As" or "Save Link As".

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